Devil in the Dark
by D.K. Archer
Summary: ToddKurt slash.  Being lost in the woods in the least of Todd's problems.
1. Devil in the Dark

The Devil in the Dark

Author: Earthenwing

Rating: PG

Warnings: Some cussing. Be offended. Be horribly offended.

-----

That was the third damned car. As the taillights disappeared into the trees Todd spat after it, glowering, but he couldn't blame them; he wouldn't pick him up either, not here, in the dark, lost in the tangle of roads that branched into the forest and died at the foot of private residences, badly marked and badly maintained. Even a boy scout would look threatening out here, to say nothing of a scraggly teenaged boy in ripped jeans and a faded out tshirt, stained down the front from a bloody nose.

Out in the dark, two green lights blinked at him, low to the ground. Hopefully a raccoon. Todd jammed his hands in his pockets and kept walking, chilled in the dark autumn night that was serenaded by the crickets and the owls, lost under the towering arms of the fir trees.

Todd had never realized jut how dark dark could be. In the city it never got dark, not really. There were streetlamps and signs and a thousand window lights, and even in the worst districts there was something to see by, the powerful internal glow of the polluted sky if nothing else. Here there was no glow. There were no stars. He could catch them now and then, of course, peeking through the branches of the trees that lined the road but he could never keep them, never even make the token effort of orienting himself by the stars. Not that he knew how. It could keep him from walking in circles, at least.

"Todd!"

The boy shrieked and spun, slipping on the loose dirt. Two yellow lights were staring from the road behind him, not reflecting the light, but creating it. Fear was quickly replaced by a scowl.

"Dawg, I told you to leave me the fuck alone!" he snapped, listening as Kurt moved quietly over the dirt road towards him. He couldn't hear a thing. The boy was a ghost.

"Yeah, well…" Kurt tried, gold lights narrowing. In the light Todd could see bare hints of the boy's face, a flash of hand or tail. "You're going the wrong way."

"And you know the right way? Why don't you just fuck off and leave me be, I am so sick of you right now!" Todd snapped, the night sounds getting quieter around them.

Kurt's eyes narrowed to slits. "Well I don't want to have to explain if you get eaten by a bear or something!" Kurt snapped. "It's forty some miles of forest that way!" Of course, Todd couldn't see where he was pointing, but he assumed it was the way Todd had been going.

"Yeah, and what do you care, huh?" Todd shouted back. "Who you gonna have to explain it to! Nobody's gonna fucking care if I get lost out there!"

"Oh, don't you START on the self pity right now!" Kurt replied, exasperated. "I can't take your pissing and moaning any more tonight!"

"ME?? I'M the one wallowing in self pity?" Todd snapped. "Who spent half the night whining about Amanda's new boyfriend, huh? You port my ass way out here to a cabin in the middle of NOWHERE and you spent the while damned night just bitch bitch bitch."

"I did not!" Kurt flared, and the light from his eyes flashed momentarily brighter. "I was trying to TALK to you for once instead of just fucking like rabbits but you won't say a damned thing to me!"

"Oh, there we go, the real bone of contention there!" Todd spat, and started walking again, away from Kurt and his luminescent eyes and towards what Kurt had said was 40 miles of woodland. "Whaddaya want me to do, break down and tell you the whole lame story of my life? What are you, my psychiatrist now? You want me to tell you how my daddy didn't hug me enough as a kid or how I have sexual fantasies about my mom WHICH I DON'T." He cut Kurt off on that one before he could even start. "You ain't a priest YET, fuzzball, and I don't gotta confess nothing to you."

"I'm not trying to make you confess anything, I just want to talk!" Kurt protested, following him. The sight was a little unnerving. "I don't know anything about you! I mean, I've told you everything—"

"Yeah, and I really wanted to hear THAT bitchfest!"

"—And I don't even know what your favorite color is! What movies you watch! Where you go on Saturday nights!"

"It ain't any of your damned business, dawg!" Todd snapped, frustrated. "It ever occur to you maybe I don't WANNA know all this bullshit about you? Maybe I wasn't ever looking for anything other than freaky sex at three in the morning and I don't CARE what you do with yourself the other 23 hours of the day! I don't care, dawg! This ain't a relationship! This is two freaks banging each other like drums 'cause nobody else in this world wants to!"

That seemed to shut Kurt up. Todd kept walking, satisfied for a few moment before he looked cautiously over his shoulder. The twin lights that had been following him were gone.

"Kurt?" He called warily.

There was no response.

Todd gave a satisfied snort, telling himself that was exactly the outcome he wanted. Then he turned around, and stared walking back the other way, away from the endless wilderness. Probably.

It was about three hours later, when Todd had sat down at the foot of one of the trees, the woods too dark to see his own sneakers and his legs aching from the walk, that Kurt's yellow eyes reappeared in the dark. About four inches from his face. Todd yelped and threw a handful of the forest floor at Kurt's face.

"You fucker, would you quit doing that??" Todd shouted. "You scared the shit out of me!"

The lights disappeared as Kurt tried to rub the dirt out of his eyes. "Damn it, Todd!"

"Serves you right for bamfing up on me like that." Todd said, making up the phrase on the spot and deciding he liked it.

The lights reappeared, dimly, and narrowed. "Well you're still going the wrong fucking way." Kurt snapped. "The road ended about a mile back there. This is a deer path."

"Gee, sorry, my onboard navigation system seems to be broken." Todd said, rolling his eyes. "What do you care?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm horrible, would you let me take you back already?" Kurt said. "I'm sick of following your sorry ass around and making sure you don't die."

"And I'm sick of you popping in and pissing me off every chance you get!" Todd shouted.

Kurt was quiet for a moment. "Look," he said, sounding controlled. "Maybe you hate my guts, and maybe you don't care about me at all, but I'm not gonna just leave you out here."

"Oh, how touching." Todd sneered. "Your fucking fault I'm out here in the first place."

"I didn't make you leave the cabin!" Kurt snapped.

"No, but you fucking made sure I'm not stayin!" Todd snapped back, holding out the bloody smudges on his tshirt, though he didn't know whether Kurt could see them or not.

Kurt was quiet for a moment, though the twin lights remained.

"I'm sorry." Kurt said grudgingly. "I shouldn't have hit you. But you started it."

"And you fucking punched me in the face."

"You spit at me!"

"Like you so didn't have that coming!"

Kurt glowered. "Are we just gonna have this stupid fight all over again or are you gonna let me take you back to the cabin?"

"Sounds like, oh, neither." Todd said stubbornly. "I ain't interested in anything you got to say and I sure as hell ain't interested in going back and being stuck in a little wooden box with you again."

"You make it sound like I've been torturing you." Kurt grumbled.

"You have been!" Todd snapped. "You bitch and moan and then you wonder why I ain't joining you?? Maybe I don't wanna bitch and moan at you! Maybe my own fucked up life is my own fucking problem and I don't need patted on the head by some fuzzy blue freak fest who thinks we're bonding or whatever!"

Kurt's eyes narrowed. "What are you so afraid of?"

Dead silence. Todd just stared up at him in the dark.

"I ain't afraid of nothin'." Todd said, quieter than he had been a moment ago. "It just ain't your business."

"What if I wanted it to be my business?"

A pause. "Then you're shit out of luck." Todd nearly croaked. "Because I can't tell you any of that."

"Can't or won't?"

Silence. Kurt realized maybe the answer wasn't what he thought it was. Kurt knelt down to Todd's level.

"What if I don't ask the hard questions, huh? What if I just ask something easy?"

"Yeah, like what." Todd grumbled, voice bordering on petulant.

"Favorite food and favorite color. You tell me that, I won't ask you anything about, say, the first ten years of your life."

Tonight. he amended silently.

They stared at each other for a while.

"Green." Todd said finally. "My favorite color is green. And I like spaghetti."

"There, was that so hard?" Kurt grinned, and held his hand out to Todd. His fur was lit yellow by his eyes.

Todd stared at it for a long while, then took it, letting Kurt pull him in close enough to port.

"You are a real asshole, dawg." Todd grumbled, settling his head against Kurt's shoulder. "I gotta be nuts hanging around with you."

"Same to you." Kurt said, grinning. "But you're still stuck with me until tomorrow morning. Or until one of us kills the other."

"Don't give me any ideas." Todd deadpanned.

They disappeared in a flare of brimstone, and slowly, the night things began to chirp again, scattering the dark with their sounds.


	2. Bonus round

Bonus round! Seven short prompts for Todd and Kurt.

--------------------------------

1. Birthday

"Dawg, I'm still trying to figure out if I should smack you or not." Todd muttered, eyeing the bag of chocolate covered crickets while Kurt snickered next to him. It was better than the soap-on-a-rope he'd gotten him last year, but he still thought Kurt was a little too amused right now.

2. Balcony

There were some things he simply couldn't resist. Kurt leaned over the balcony railing and clasped his hands with his most maiden-like expression.

"Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" Kurt cooed, and below him on the ground, Todd rolled his eyes.

"You are so fucking gay, dawg." Todd called up to him. "Now get your ass down here before I throw the next rock at your HEAD."

"Coming, coming." Kurt grinned, and with a bamf was standing next to Todd on the manicured lawn of the Institute. Todd watched him grin and gave a put upon sigh.

"So damned gay."

3. Victory

Todd had him up against the brick wall of the alley, hands pinned loosely above his head and a thigh up between his legs, shifting slightly and making Kurt gasp at the friction. It was too hard to breath as Todd's hand slid slowly down the front of his uniform, that ugly mouth fixed on the base of his throat and biting the tendon there.

"I win." Todd grinned at him, eyelids lowered, and Kurt listened carefully to the sounds of the continuing battle out there, Scott and Jean taking on Lance and Freddy not two blocks from the mall. Faction wars, nothing else.

"Not yet, you didn't." Kurt said, slipping his hands free and wrapping them around Todd's middle. Todd blinked at him in surprise as they disappeared from the alley.

4. Talent

Tying a cherry stem in a knot with his tongue was nothing. Kurt had seen him make a balloon animal with his tongue once (and hadn't that been the weirdest club he'd ever been to) and he had no illusions about Todd's oral proficiency. None whatsoever.

5. Wings

"See, now tell me that is not hot." Todd had said, watching from the bleachers while Warren stretched his wings out on the football field, trying to get away from the throng of admirers his first day of public school. "Wings. Can you imagine sex with wings? That would be freaking awesome."

Kurt grumbled something grudgingly under his breath, giving Warren a dirty look from almost a hundred yards away. Todd snickered.

"Don't worry." He grinned, and messed up Kurt's hair. "Freaky wing sex will never be hotter than freaky prehensile tail sex."

"Better not be." Kurt grumbled.

6. Formal

"A tux." Todd said slowly. "I. Am wearing. A freaking tux."

"And it looks good on you." Kurt said, straightening his own tie nervously.

"Where the hell did you even find me a freaking tux?" Todd asked warily. "I feel like a gay penguin."

"Xavier's got a whole closet full of stuff like that." Kurt explained, slapping Todd's hand away from fiddling with his buttons.

Todd gaped at him. "Xavier's…? Eww. Eww, dawg. Just eww."

"Oh, shut up. This evening is going to be awkward enough as it is without that." he said, and grabbed Todd by the hand. "Ready for the most embarrassing thing you've ever done?"

"Being seen in public with your ugly ass?"

"Exactly." Kurt grinned, and with a quick kiss, bamfed them away to the Bayville Senior Prom before either one had a chance to change their mind.

7. Sing

"You didn't." Kurt said flatly, glaring balefully up at the little stage where the last singer was taking her bow.

"Oh, I so did." Todd grinned.

Kurt groaned. "Dear Lord, help me."

Todd bounced up to the stage and gleefully took the karaoke mike while Kurt buried his head under his arms in humiliation. "I do not know that boy."

"If you like pina coladas!" Todd sang cheerfully. "And getting caught in the rain...!"


End file.
